The Arab Spring

Any news from Yemen? North Sudan?

It's not exactly a secret that Al-Saud has been propagating it's fundamentalist crap throughout the Middle East. They hate the Syrian government for being secular and run by Shias who tolerate non-Sunnis, and they want to help the rebels in the hopes of establishing a Sunni fundamentalist state similar to Saudi Arabia in Syria.

Also, Syria is an ally of Iran, and the Saudi oligarchs hate Iran at least as much as they hate Israel. They'd do anything to screw it over.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/01/08/yemen-assassination-attempt-riles-youths.html

Here you go.

edited 1st Sep '12 5:55:38 PM by stripesthezebra

I'd say the Saudis hate the Iranians more than they hate the Israelis. Israel has managed to negotiate tacit agreements with many of the other Gulf states' governments (one reason the Arab Spring has made it nervous, as it doesn't know if the new governments will be as amenable—it remembers the last time populist Arab governments whipped themselves into a frenzy), and that definitely includes Saudi Arabia. That's not counting the whole US-military-aid angle; if they start growling at each other, the US can threaten to take away some of their goodies.

Iran has no such agreement with Saudi Arabia. Plus there's all the factors that Stripes mentioned; both AQ and the Taliban were offshoots of Saudi Wahhabi fundamentalism, turned against their creator. So Syria has a high chance of turning into a proxy battleground between Saudi- and Qatari-backed FSA versus Iranian-backed regime forces. If Saudi Arabia could trap Iranian forces, Revolutionary Guards and Qods Force, into a stalemate on the Levant, it will have the chance to do to the Iranians what Iranian-backed militias did to the US in Iraq. I doubt Israel will get involved in Syria, but it might intervene in Lebanon if the conflict spills over any further. Unlikely, though, considering that it's preparing for a more direct war with Iran.

Not really newsworthy at this point, but the Syrian Army killed 144 more people, some "Execution Style".

There's really a problem when 144 deaths are no longer considered newsworthy...

There's this huge war that kills those kinds of numbers every day. It's called "traffic".

And that does not contradict my post.

So your point is what? There is nothing you can do about and there is no point in getting worked up about it.

It is a war being fought between a multi-faceted rebellion and a opressive violent incumbant government. People are going to die. If you got worked up over every single death, tragic or not, you would lose your mind.

It is unfortuneate that is just another news clip reporting news that is not surprising. However we have had multiple reports of such events already. The part that got my attention was that some of the dead were apparently executed in some manner. The death count is just a number. We have a pretty good idea why they were killed. What we should be paying attention to is how they died. How many were combatants or were just civilians bottled up in the city.

One of the mass graves from June (or maybe it was July) was said to have included little children who had been shot in the head from close range. So execution-style headshots aren't something we're seeing for the first time in this conflict. Thinking and talking about this is painful.

I know that executions and massacres are really common at this point, but since everyone posts news of them here I thought it was appropriate.

Yeah, they're news. The more articles we get linked (and preferably summarised) here, the better.

Is there any information if the killings are generally reprisal-style attacks on civilians, or if there's an ethnic pattern involved?

Best of: yeah not a pleasant thing to dwell on. Executing everything they can. Really sounds like they want to put whole areas to the torch.

Well, if we want to be charitable, we could assume that, having killed the children's parents, and not being able to care for them themselves, they decided to give the children a quick death, rather than, say, let them starve.

Otherwise I don't see what sense it makes to shoot a baby in the head, sadism doesn't work that way, it would take a very unusual kind of person to kill children for thrills.

On the other hand, it takes a very ordinary person to kill the children if they were given orders to "kill everyone in the household".

Also, Gadbastard employed plenty of 'people' whom could and did do things like that in a heartbeat.

They seem to come out of the woodwork when dictatorships are in crisis.

I think it's more likely that the soldiers have been told to clear an area, and not by evacuating it. The soldiers don't have much of a choice in the matter, and the officers giving those orders probably don't care or are themselves in a position where they can't decide what kind of orders they give.

I doubt that many of the people in charge could actually watch the crimes being carried out. The soldiers in the field get their distance to the events from the fact that they've got orders from someone who presumably knows better; and the people in charge get their distance from actually being somewhere where they don't have to know what exactly their orders caused. No one has to make a decision and watch it unfold. Instead, they either see themselves as parts in a machine or they think about the big picture instead of allowing themselves to relate to their victims.

Of course there are also sadists who do want to think about what they've done when they've given an order like that, but I doubt that you could ever have an entire army led by those kinds of people. (Not that you need an army for the current extent of mayhem, though.)

The Stanley Milgram Experiment, huh?

Well, that and, you know, WWII.

In fact, you don't have to leave the Middle East to find examples of this sort of thing. Saddam's Iraq contained just about every kind of sadistic atrocity you can name with the help of a dictionary. He held a meeting of the Ba'ath Party where a man who had been tortured read out a list of names of Ba'ath leaders who were alleged to have conspired against Saddam. As the names were being read out, the people whose names were mentioned were arrested on the spot and dragged outside. The rest of the party conference were then led outside to personally carry out the executions of those who had been arrested.

There is no step in that process where you can remain innocent or not involved.

The situation of the soldiers carrying out these massacres is probably not any better than that of the Ba'ath party members who shot their friends that day. There are bound to be officers around, threatening the soldiers with the death penalty if they disobey.

edited 3rd Sep '12 5:49:27 PM by BestOf

Interesting. There should be a protocol to deal with this. People should be trained and morally equipped to deal with this kind of Prisoner's Dilemma. Otherwise, they are too vulnerable.

The only way that I can think of that you could do anything at all about something like this if you're the one being controlled is to turn your weapons against your leaders in a suicide attack. But of course people like Saddam and Assad will tell their soldiers that they have extensive records of everyone, including what schools their kids go to.

Of course, that would need to be part of the training too: how to be able not to give in to this kind of blackmail (or any kind, for that matter).

While you're working on the anti-coercion human training, I'll get to work hunting down Eve and get her to barf up the Apple of Sin. (Translation: ain't gonna work without rewiring human nature; otherwise we wouldn't have dictatorships.)

The Handle: It is not so simple or so easy. Your best bet is to try and leave and get as far from the place as you can. If your there your pretty much boned.

edited 3rd Sep '12 6:26:38 PM by TuefelHundenIV

[soapbox]Forgive me for resorting to a parable, but Ï think it is powerful, and serves my point:

Some people are able to resist this kind of coercion. Enough to think they are not weird mutants, but normal enough that we could all be like them, if we learned how to. It is in human nature to give in, and it is in human nature not to give in: human nature is flexible. It's only a matter of figuring out how.

With a population that is trained to resist this (rather than accept it, such as in countries that have conscription), dictatorships, ocupations, and other exertions of power by force would have a hard time subjugating the country without exterminating the natives and replacing them with docile colonists. Because people would simply refuse to obey, rather die than obey, and dictators and opressors would find themselves powerless as no-one listens to them.

Of course, it is not in the interest of governments (or authority wielders in general) to promote this kind of knowledge. And so the Stanley Milgram Experiment or the Stamford Prison Experiment aren't taught in school, and children aren't taught to disobey their parents and teachers when their consciousness tells them it's right to.

[/soapbox]

Look, sometimes people can do nasty things because they feel pressured to. I believe this could be and should be trained out of them. But it's not our place to judge Assad's cronies while unaware of their circumstances, save that they were not given that training. As for Assad himself, is there an external source of pressure that makes him do what he does? Does he have an exuse?